The Heartland Line Up:

If you have seen the Heartland Center social media pages, maybe you have come to know and love the Cornerstone Interns. If you haven’t seen those pages, please go check them out! The line up is as follows: Top L-R: Emily H. (Washington), Erin (North Dakota), Aubrey (Texas), Emily T. (Kansas), Bottom L-R: Macy (South Carolina),Jake (Iowa), Mylika (New York), and Vicki (Oregon). We are 8 people from 8 different states and we think that is pretty cool.

Being an intern for us isn’t about just wanting to spend days at camp. Though that is definitely a wonderful perk of our job. For me, being an intern here is about discerning my call into camp ministry. And from what the others have told me, we are pretty much all on that same page. In some way, we all feel a call toward ministry. Some, like me are called toward camp. Others feel called to church and youth ministry. We are here to discern those calls and what our next steps in ministry are. Heartland has been helping us along the way with different experiences that will help in our ministry.

You may be curious about what the life of a Heartland intern is like… well you are in luck! I am going to tell you all about it. Sit back, buckle up and enjoy the ride!

I think an internship is an incredibly exciting thing to be a part of. We have several different areas that we work in. Program, Church, Maintenance and Hospitality are our four areas and don’t tell the others but Program is my personal favorite.

Program means doing a lot of things around the office. Personally- I am doing a lot of stuff with our promotional material and with summer planning. Program also means keeping up with our super cool blog! So, thank you for reading.

The week of a Heartland Intern is busy.

I start off Sunday morning bright and early. I’m awake at 6:30 (okay… 6:45) and am on my way to church by 7:30. We all work at different churches around Kansas City as part of our internship. I work at Second Presbyterian and love it there! When I get to church, I start my jobs for the morning. Usually setting up check-in stations and making sure Sunday School teachers have what they need. Once Sunday School is set to go, I am running around making sure that nothing is needed by the nursery, the Family Ministries Director, or by the teachers. After church in the morning I have free afternoons, but that isn’t normal. Most of the other interns have youth groups that meet Sunday night.

Most mornings of the week, I head to work. Program weeks I check in with Jared (our Program Director), Maintenance weeks I head up to feed the horses and Hospitality weeks I check in with Emma (head of hospitality). Then I start my tasks for the day. As you can imagine, with a small army of interns, we get a lot done. Most days I am checking in with the person giving jobs several times.

I have been working on different promotional material since I got here in September. Currently I am working on the summer brochure for 2018 (it’s already started!) and designing the birthday postcards our campers get this year.

I studied art in college, so I really enjoy helping camp in these tasks. Though it takes a lot of back and forth with most of the people in the office. Emma is really great with design, Amy (our desk host) is great with grammar and spelling and Michael (our Associate Executive Director) and Jared get final input about the design of things. It is a fair amount of time looking through our photos and making sure we are using the best ones to show you all how incredible camp is.

Monday nights are our time to spend as an intentional community, not just 8 adults thrown into a house. We have dinner together (2 people cook), we spend time discussing the book we are reading (currently The Sacred Romance by John Eldridge) and have entertainment (2 people lead that as well). These nights are really special to us because we are able to spend time together as a family and not having to worry about anything else for a little bit of time.

Most other nights we just hang around the house. Most of us are off work by 5:30 every day. The only exception to that is if we have a kitchen shift scheduled for dinner. Sometimes we will go out to dinner in Parkville or Kansas City, but more often than not, we are hanging out in our living room. Feel free to comment on this blog with fun activities you think we could check out in Kansas City or other cities- we love to travel!

At other points in the week, people go to their churches for the day instead of working at camp. My day is Thursday. This day is spent doing different things setting up for the next Sunday and making sure that things are going to run smoothly in the Family Ministries department.

We always have one full day off a week to spend relaxing and getting ready for our next week. Lately that has been Saturday but not always.

Every week at Heartland is unique and a blessing. The Cornerstone interns have really enjoyed our time here so far and we are all looking forward to how 2017 turns out!

For your family

Have a “Community Night”! Cook dinner and all eat together. Discuss what you are reading or doing in school right now. Ask questions and really listen to each other. After that you get to do an activity together! Maybe that is a family game, a trip to get ice cream, make valentines for each person in your house. If they are willing to help, ask the kids to lead entertainment for the evening; maybe their favorite camp game! This is a time to really be together as a family. No stress, just spending time together.

Thank you for keeping up with us here at Heartland.

Macy, Heartland Intern